


gather all the quivers that never got to fly

by glitteratiglue



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: F/M, Family, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Movie: Star Trek Nemesis (2002), Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:29:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23038636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteratiglue/pseuds/glitteratiglue
Summary: The rocks that weigh him down are inside her, too.
Relationships: William Riker/Deanna Troi
Comments: 47
Kudos: 90





	gather all the quivers that never got to fly

**Author's Note:**

> Nepenthe was beautiful and perfect but also fucked me up like 1000%. I had to work it out in fic form, but the world's a little scary right now so it took me longer to finish this than I would have liked. Stay safe, everyone.

Security was something Will had never taken for granted in his life. The lack of it had led him to strive: for Starfleet, for the captain’s chair, for a less than ordinary existence. Eventually, for Deanna.

He allowed himself to relax into the easy joy of the life they’d made together, but there was always a part of him that was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Deanna was never that way. She would counsel him to live for the moment, tell him that plans for the future were just that — plans.

If anything terrible were to happen, he thought for the longest time that it’d be him. A diplomatic mission gone wrong, an explosion on the bridge, an exotic alien virus. Holding the captain’s rank put you in the firing line more often than Starfleet was willing to admit.

Sometimes you were unlucky enough to lose a parent; it was a harsh truth that he and Deanna had both learned at a young age. Life and death decisions were part of his job. He had to consider the possibility. Will had legal documents drawn up, plans that would make Deanna roll her eyes, though she appreciated his foresight. He’d thought through most scenarios, done everything he could think of to ensure his family would be taken care if either of them were lost in the line of duty.

The scenario he’d never considered was one where he might outlive either of his children.

The day they got Thad’s diagnosis was the day Will realised that getting everything you ever wanted didn’t mean you got to keep it.

When they first moved to Nepenthe, Deanna would often find her way to Thad’s door once he’d fallen asleep, listening to him breathe. Trying to remember every pattern of his breaths, a memory she could imprint on her heart more deeply than any recording.

“Imzadi,” Will would say, a sadness etched into the lines on his face that she understood only too well. “Come back to bed. Thad’s okay; let him sleep. We’ll have more days. More nights.”

They did. So many more and never enough.

The day it happens, Deanna is surprised by the acceptance that settles into her. Something more should happen when your universe cracks in two, she thinks. It should feel like a planet-ravaging disaster, like her world has been razed to ashes.

It’s more like a stone hitting the surface of a pond. Inevitable and quiet, the ripples of her son’s future swiftly vanishing beneath dark water.

Nothing stops. They make arrangements, answer messages of condolence from the few people they still keep in touch with since they chose this atomised lifestyle. Put all their energy into being there for Kestra, who must bear this loss only ten years into her life.

Days later, Deanna realises she already can't remember the sound of Thad breathing. That’s when she knows her mind was lying to her.

Her supposed acceptance breaks apart like weakened glass. There’s no such thing when you’re left staring out at a world without your child in it.

For the first couple of weeks after the funeral, Kestra crawls into their bed almost every night.

It’s been many years since they regularly shared their room with their children. That was different, of course. Often, they’d be halfway to sleep when a tangle of little limbs would wedge themselves insistently in between them, whether invited or not. Guilt over their long shifts as duty officers led them to indulge their children in such ways, probably more often than they should have.

They get used to leaving a space for her, waiting for the familiar patter of Kestra’s feet before she squashes herself into the centre of the bed. Sometimes she’ll cry, but mostly, she’ll just fall asleep knowing her parents are next to her. It’s what she needs right now and they don’t question it.

Deanna lies there, listening to her daughter’s even breaths in the dark. There’s the familiar sense of Kestra’s mind ebbing and flowing against hers, and all she can think of is the mind she can no longer feel.

She knows Will is just as awake as her, on the other side of the bed. When she reaches for his thoughts in reflex, he pushes back.

_Imzadi, don’t._

He glances at the sleeping Kestra, strokes a hand over her hair, and then he turns over in bed so he’s facing away from them. He isn’t crying but she can hear the shudder of his breaths, how he’s fighting to get himself under control.

Deanna wonders when Will decided he wanted to wall her out of his grief. He has always let her draw strength from his mind, and she’s needed it greatly in the last few years.

The rejection doesn’t hurt worse than this, but it’s close enough.

In those early days, Deanna lets Will carry much more than he should on his capable shoulders. He has always been a giver: of his affection, his laughter, his love, and she takes advantage of it now. He tells the bad jokes that she’ll laugh at anyway, cooks her favourite meals even when her appetite is scarce. For Kestra, Will devises fun home-school lessons, takes her out for long walks in the woods to give Deanna a respite from the echoing grief jostling for space inside her brain.

She pretends not to notice the new heaviness in his posture, the effort behind all his smiles. Will has always dealt with things in his own way, and she’ll respect that for now.

He never dealt with them alone, before, but maybe that’s one more thing that’s changed.

Will never intended to withdraw from Deanna’s mind. It happens gradually, until one day he realises he can hardly sense her.

He knows what it does to her, sensing Kestra’s loss every day, the agony of losing her only sibling that her small body can barely process right now.

In Deanna’s eyes, he sees the same hollow dullness that stares back at him from the mirror every morning. To share in his own grief would be too much for her right now. He won’t make it worse for her; he can’t. He loves her so much and every time he senses her pain, it only strengthens his resolve to keep himself together, to keep their family together as best he can.

This isn’t the life he was supposed to give her, and he can’t shake the sense that he’s failed Deanna in so many ways.

So he does the only thing he can and pushes down his grief until it calcifies inside him. The rocks that weigh him down are inside her, too, and he won’t make her burden heavier.

Kestra’s struggle is the one that weighs on Deanna the most. She’d been her brother’s shadow, had worshipped him and his pretend homeworld without question. Ardani had become their shared creation, and now she must inhabit it alone.

They try their best. She’s reasonably compliant when it comes to her studies. There are classes over at Infinity Lake, and they enrol her in them the moment she expresses an interest. Kestra tries modern dance, astronomy, mok’bara, art and loves them all, as the child of two explorers surely would.

They host a sleepover for her eleventh birthday, let her enjoy the giddy pleasures of staying up all night and watching movies in bed with her friends.

Nothing they can do for their daughter will ever be close to enough, but she is happy some of the time, at least.

Around Kestra, Deanna can manage a facsimile of her usual self. Often, they sit in Thad’s room, talk of him as much as they can, switching between Standard and Harpanthi and Yzidu. Thad had taught his sister some of all eleven of his languages. Will and Deanna had learned as much as they could, but different ones had gone in and out of fashion over the years as new aspects of Ardani were revealed. Deanna has always struggled with Viveen, the most complex of the languages, but it’s Kestra favourite and makes her wild little heart glad to speak it.

On the other side of time, she remembers a seven-year-old girl who learned how unfair the world was the day they brought her father’s body home. Her loneliness, when her mother retreated into herself and everyone else pulled her thoughts of her father from her head before she could speak them. Sadly, Will knew that only too well, having grown up with a father like Kyle Riker and no mother.

Deanna wishes her daughter had never had to know that same unfairness, so early in her life. But she is determined she’ll never know that loneliness.

“You’re losing your Viveen,” Kestra declares accusingly, after a couple of hours of algebra at the dining table. “You hardly ever speak it now.”

She isn’t wrong, Will thinks. Maybe he _has_ been avoiding it, trying not to think of Thad hunched over his desk, scribbling away with a manic energy in his eyes as he worked on the many lands of Ardani and their linguistic intricacies. Always so serious, his son, in a way Deanna had understood better than he did. But Thad had believed so earnestly in everything he created. His magic and whimsy had won them all over from an early age: Kestra, most of all.

She would have followed her brother anywhere. Until she couldn’t.

Will tries to steady his breathing past the sudden ache in his chest. “You know my Harpanthi was always better,” he tells her, casting a critical eye over the problems on the PADD. He points at one answer. “We need to review this one.”

“Can we do it tomorrow, please.” Kestra sighs. “Anyway, you only remember Harpanthi because it’s easier. You haven’t been practising.”

He grins at her. “You got me there. I was never good with all the verb tenses in Viveen; those mind witches kept things a lot simpler. And okay. But we’re going to do some extra ones tomorrow.”

She hesitates a moment, then says: “It hurts you, Dad; speaking his languages. That’s why you don’t.”

“Sometimes,” Will admits, overcoming his initial impulse to deny it. “But that’s not always a good reason to avoid things. Even if they hurt you.” He can hear Deanna in the words as he says them.

Kestra pats at his hand. “I’ll get the dictionary and test you on your grammar.”

“You really aren’t very good, you know,” she says after their lesson, while Will is stirring hot chocolate on the stove.

He laughs.

“Well, I never had your mom’s gift for languages.” Will places three cups of hot chocolate on the table and shouts _“Imzadi!”_ up the stairs. “You guys got that from her.”

“You have to practice again tomorrow, Dad,” Kestra says, blowing on her hot chocolate to cool it. She runs her hand over the surface of the dictionary, where Thad had carved strange symbols and patterns into the cover.

Deanna’s eyes are red-rimmed when she comes downstairs. She kisses him on the cheek. “Lovely, Will. Thank you.”

As she takes the cup from him, she spots the dictionary. Her face blanches and the agony spiking inside her hits him, too. He manages at the last second to not let it show on his face.

“Oh, Mom,” Kestra says, her face crumpling. “It’s okay.” She winds her arms around Deanna’s neck. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just giving Dad a refresher course on Viveen.”

“I’ll be okay,” Deanna says, smiling through her tears. “I’ve got you and Daddy.” She kisses Kestra on the cheek, hugs her tightly even as her eyes well up again.

Will can see what that smile costs her, the rawness beneath it. Nausea rises inside him; he imagines the milk curdling in his stomach.

“I’m gonna go change,” Kestra says cheerfully, giving Deanna another hug before she drains the last of her hot chocolate. “Mm. Thanks, Dad.”

As soon as Kestra slips away, Deanna’s smile fades, the lifting of a mask. She gets to her feet, picking up her cup.

“Going so soon?” he says. “I was going to take a walk, Deanna. Would you like to join me?”

“I’m a little tired,” Deanna says blandly. She tries to smile. “I think I’d rather spend some time in the garden.”

She isn’t in the mood for talking, clearly. He takes a deep breath, nods at her. Tries not to let the rejection sting.

“I’ll go with you, Dad!” Kestra shouts from the top of the staircase.

“Stop yelling,” he returns. “And you hear like a bat. Eavesdropping is a bad habit, haven’t I taught you that?”

The stairs creak and then she appears, bow and quiver slung over her shoulder. She slips her hand into his and drags him out the door, chattering in a non-stop stream of Viveen that he’s happy to realise he mostly understands.

“To the Woods of Viveen!” Kestra says happily.

Will manages a few words of the language in reply. Kestra squeezes his hand, a proud expression on her face.

“Lead on, then, wild girl of the woods,” he says. “Let’s see what we can catch today.”

The truth is: sometimes Deanna can hardly bear to be alone with Will when she’s not sharing his mind. Her empathic senses tell her enough to know it’s a deliberate choice on his part.

Whatever his reasons might be, it hurts her.

On a professional level, Will’s behaviour makes sense to her. Grief has a habit of making people retreat into their own private world. She knows the strain it can put on a marriage only too well.

At first, she gives it time. Then days turn to weeks and he still won’t open up to her. She starts to wonder if they’re in trouble.

Like any couple, they’ve had their ups and downs over the years. But even through the long ordeal of Thad’s illness, Will’s devotion to her, to their bond had never wavered. Perversely, they’d never been closer as they navigated through the bittersweet last years of their son’s life.

For all the bad hands that life has dealt him, Will has never lost his kindness or his ability to make others laugh. She clings to it now, while also knowing that beneath it, he’s not dealing with any of this.

She has no idea what he’s thinking.

It feels like they’re talking across each other and not really talking about anything that matters.

In the seconds between waking and opening his eyes, Will forgets. It’s the best part of his whole day. Or, it would be, if not for the fact he knows Deanna feels it, too.

She can pinpoint the exact moment when his heart goes to pieces. When he remembers he isn’t whole anymore.

He’s never envied her less for her empathic abilities than he does now.

“You’re not setting Kestra a good example,” Deanna tells him while they stake tomato plants in the garden. “She’s never even seen you cry, not since the day he died.”

Despite his former playboy antics, performative masculinity has never been Will’s style. He’s never had a problem expressing his emotions with those closest to him, least of all her. This time is different.

She watches his mouth turn to a thin line. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he clarifies, wrapping twine around a bamboo stake and knotting it tightly. “I can’t.”

“It’s healthy to express your grief,” Deanna says gently. She passes him another stake. “She needs to know her father’s human, too.”

“I know, Deanna,” Will says. He presses a hand to his eyes, refocuses himself with the ease of years of Starfleet compartmentalisation.

“Let me help you. Please.” She’s reaching for him, hand outstretched. “You don’t even let me in your thoughts anymore, most of the time.”

He senses it now; how hurt she is by that. But he’s sure that if he were to fully relax the walls around his mind, all of it would pour out: pain and anger and the sense of abject failure he lives with every day. He doesn’t see how she could bear that along with everything she’s already carrying.

All the same, he loves her and wants her to know it. He puts down the stake and grabs her hand, kisses the back of it.

“I’ve got to figure it out my own way,” he says.

They’re drinking coffee on the porch in silence, early, before Kestra wakes.

It was always their usual morning ritual, but it’s been a while. Will has been rising before her of late, already busy with some task or other by the time she makes her way downstairs.

Sitting there, Will finds himself dwelling on every decision he’s made in the last few years. If he hadn’t waited years to tell Deanna how he felt, things might have been different. Perhaps she never should have loved him at all, never married him, if it could have saved her this pain.

He’s exhausted from yet another bad night of sleep and doesn’t realise his thoughts are right at the surface of his mind. Even before she looks at him, he senses Deanna’s horror, her betrayal.

“Deanna,” he protests. “No, it was just a stray thought.”

“You’d trade all of it — Kestra? All the years we had with Thad? Our marriage?” Deanna’s voice is sharp with a cold rage he’s rarely felt from her.

“No, I didn’t mean —”

“You meant every bit, Will.” She gets to her feet.

“Imzadi,” he tries, pointlessly. “Wait, I didn’t mean it.”

She goes anyway. He takes his empty mug back inside, miserable.

He keeps getting it wrong with Deanna. He wishes he knew how to fix it, but he can't even fix himself.

Not long after, Will is in the kitchen. He's so distracted he barely notices what he's doing until there are piles of sliced celery on the cutting board in front of him. He has no idea what he was planning to do with it.

Kestra wanders in, her squeaky leather boots trailing mud in their wake.

“Hey, little vagabond,” Will says, affection in his voice. His eyes shift to the muddy tracks she’s left. “You’d better clean that up.”

“Oops,” Kestra says, giggling before she turns a hard stare on him. “You’re fighting with Mom, aren’t you?”

Will opens his mouth to protest, but she continues: “I saw her in the garden. She was practically ripping the dandelions out of the earth. I know she’s mad at you.”

Nothing gets past her; she truly is her mother’s daughter.

“We argued, Kestra. Sometimes it happens. We’ll be okay.” He sighs.

“You didn’t used to, so much.” His daughter has always been fierce, but now her face is tight with worry. He wishes he knew the right thing to say to reassure her.

“It’s been hard for all us without Thad,” he tries. “Sometimes people are different when that happens to them.” One day, he thinks, his voice won’t break on his son’s name.

“I don’t know, Dad,” Kestra says, starting to clean up the mud with a cloth. “Sometimes you don’t even seem like you’re sad about it.”

Will turns back towards the window, his eyes going unfocused. Somewhere in the pit of his stomach, there’s a surge of that distant, gnawing ache he’s cut himself off from. He tries to get a grip on himself before he ends up falling apart around his little girl. He can’t do that; she needs him.

The unfairness of it all chokes him, because they tried everything, they tried so hard and they lost Thad anyway. All he could give his son was a homeworld and a few more years, when he should have had so much more.

Kestra is watching him now, her eyes wide and anxious.

“Come here,” he says, pulling a smile onto his face, and she runs into his arms. He pulls her into a tight hug, muddy cloth and all.

“You are sad, aren’t you,” she says perceptively. “You just don’t cry much, not like mom and me do.”

“Of course I am.” He kisses the top of her head before he lets her go. “But I think your mom would say we all deal with things in our own way.”

“I hate it when she says that.” Kestra grins. She spots the contents of the cutting board. “Celery; ugh. What in the world are you making with that?”

“Soup, maybe. I hadn’t thought about it.”

She tosses the dirty cloth into the reclamator. “That sounds gross.”

Will laughs. “You know, it kind of does, now that you mention it.” He eyes her cloak, her small bag of provisions. She’s dressed for an expedition. “And where might you be going, wild girl of the woods?”

“I found a new burrow of bunnicorns, up by the lake,” she says excitedly. “I think there are babies there. I want to go see.”

“Be careful out there,” he calls after her as she races for the door.

“I’m sorry,” Will says, when Deanna comes back in and throws down her gardening gloves. “I really didn’t mean it. Sometimes people just think things.”

“I don’t know, Will,” she says, flat. “I wouldn’t know what you’re thinking because you won’t let me in.” She’s on the verge of tears, the words coming out halting. “I feel like I don’t even have you anymore.”

“Deanna, that’s not true.” The look on his face is hurt, accusing.

Then his hands are on her wrists and he’s kissing her with a hunger that shocks her, crowding her up against the counter. Her mouth opens under his, and she’s nearly crying from how good it feels to be _wanted_ like this, to feel something that isn’t that yawning void inside of her.

“Will,” Deanna says, her lips tingling when he finally lets her go. “Wait — Kestra?”

“She’s gone to the woods,” he says, and then they stumble up the stairs, Will pulling her along by the wrist, his grip tight enough to hurt.

It’s been months, she thinks; she can’t even recall the last time they were intimate.

As soon as the door closes behind them, he’s on her, the force of his need like an onslaught. He’s kissing her like he wants to bury himself under her skin, his hands rough and all over her, tugging at her dress as she moans into his mouth.

“Deanna,” he’s saying once they’re naked on the bed. Her thighs are around his hips, trying to pull him in. “Wait. You’re not even wet.”

“Please,” she says. “I don’t care; just do it.”

She knows he feels that thought, is betting on the fact he won’t be able to deny her, not like this, not when he’s worn down to his frayed edges from holding their daughter most of last night after she cried herself to sleep.

Even now, he’s trying to be gentle: laying careful kisses on her neck, his fingers pressing between her legs. Deanna can’t bear the tenderness. She thinks she might shatter, fly apart if he doesn’t fuck her right this second.

“Now, Will. Please.”

“You _have_ got me,” Will says fiercely, and then he’s pressing inside her, rough and swift enough to satisfy her. “You’ve got me. I promise.”

“Will,” Deanna gasps. She claws red lines into his back, encouraging him. God help him, he shouldn’t, but a part of him wants it like this too, wants to take her hard enough that she’ll forget everything, if only for a few moments. He holds onto her thigh for leverage and shoves into her desperately. Tries to give her everything she’s asking for.

But then he meets her eyes and they’re hollow, the lines at the corners stretched tight with pain.

In horror, Will stops himself. “Hey, I’m not letting you punish yourself with this,” he says. “I’m hurting you.”

“I don’t care,” she insists, nails digging into his upper arms, trying to push back at him.

His hands wrap around her hips like steel, hold her down. “I want you to feel good, Deanna. You deserve that.”

“I don’t know if I do.” Her eyes are blurring with new tears, and Will looks stricken.

“Hey, don’t say that. You do. I’m sorry.” He’s pressing open-mouthed kisses on her throat, her collarbone. When he starts to move again, he takes it as slow as he can, panting out sharp, stilted breaths against her skin while she keeps her arms tight around his back.

“Touch yourself,” he tells her, reaching for her arm so he can tug it downwards. “Think you can come? Take your time.” Though he isn’t in her mind, Deanna knows he can feel the tension in every line of her body, how much she needs the release.

She’s nodding as she slips her own fingers between them, and he smiles at the soft “ _Oh,_ ” that slips out when she finds the rhythm she likes, when she starts to enjoy it. There’s nothing sensual about it, but it’s a comfort they both sorely need. Deanna eventually breaks apart with a cry that sounds like it’s been wrenched from her throat. He kisses her forehead, holds her through it while she pulls him close.

It takes Will a certain amount of concentration to get there. When he finally manages to come, he makes a sound into her neck that’s close to a sob. That’s when he realises he really is crying. He rolls off her, sits up, tries to get control of himself.

“Will,” Deanna says, already wrapping her arms around him. Her body’s so warm he can’t bring himself to pull away. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

He can’t look at her, can barely get the words out: “I loved him, Deanna, so much. He was ours. And I couldn’t save him.”

Will has reached his limit. He’s tired and he’s hurting and he’s lonelier than he’s ever been in his life. Breaking the habit of weeks, he lets the barriers around his thoughts fall.

“I thought you were angry with me,” Deanna says, her face anguished as his pain, his shame floods into her mind. Her arms tighten around him.

“No,” he gets out. It’s the last thing he says for a while.

Now he’s started it’s like lancing a sore, pressing on an infected wound to draw out the poison. He gives in, lets her hold him while he presses these awful, gasping noises into her shoulder, crying until his eyes are swollen and a headache pounds behind his temples. She cries, too, lets him feel the ache inside of her that’s filled every space between them since they lost Thad.

“Why did you say you didn’t deserve that?” he says, some minutes later.

“Sometimes I feel like I failed you, Will,” Deanna admits. “He was your son as much as mine. Something made him susceptible to the virus. Was it me? Was it my Betazoid genes?”

She hasn’t talked this way in years. It breaks his heart more than anything that she’d think she isn’t enough for him.

“Deanna,” Will says, taking her face in his hands, kissing her tear-stained cheeks, her forehead. “Never say that. It’s not true, and even if it were, it would never be your fault.”

“Sometimes I feel like I should have done more,” she muses. “I don’t know. Tried for something illegal. Were there positronic matrices out there somewhere, on the black market?”

“Don't do this, Deanna,” he says seriously. They've had this same conversation many times over the years. "The complexity of that tech; I don’t believe there was anyone else out there who knew how to make it correctly, or safely. Bruce Maddox and his team were the only ones who really understood how to create positronic brains, and nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him in years.” He sighs. “Remember when I thought about trying to find him? But the penalties for violating the ban —”

“I know, Deanna agrees with a sigh. “You didn’t want to spend the little time Thad had left on some wild goose chase. I love you for that. And for talking me out of trying to do something crazy.”

Federation penalties for violating the ban remain severe. They could have ended up on a prison colony just for attempting to obtain synth tech, and that wasn’t the life they wanted for their children. Nepenthe had been the best compromise: a place that would give Thad some more time.

This subject is one they both thought they’d made peace with some years ago, but Thad being gone throws their every choice beneath a harsh, unforgiving spotlight.

“I have to say something, imzadi.” He’s reaching for her hands. “What I was thinking this morning; it was just a fleeting thought. It didn’t mean anything. If you think that I regret a moment of the years we’ve spent together, that I regret our children, you’d be wrong. I wouldn’t give it up for a second. Any of it. Even the pain of this.” His voice is breaking, now.

“I wouldn’t, either,” she says, her hands tightly wrapped around his. “Sometimes, I think those things, too. That’s why I got so angry. I was guilty, for occasionally wishing I’d never married you.”

“Ouch,” Will says, and then they’re both laughing, slightly forced. He looks at the chronometer. “We'd better get dressed.”

It’s a start.

Their renewed physical connection becomes their bridge back to one another.

When they can’t talk or think about any of it, when they need a distraction, they can find each other in bed.

They have to snatch moments when they can, make furtive plans the way they’ve learned to since they became parents. When Kestra is playing at being a Viveen warrior or busy with one of her extracurriculars, in the quiet hours late at night when they’re sure she’s sleeping.

Once, when they have a free house for the whole afternoon, Will lifts Deanna on to the kitchen counter and takes her right there, amongst flour and scraps of bread dough. It’s raw and tender and playful in a way they haven’t managed in a long time.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Deanna says, giggling, naked from the waist down with him deep inside her. Her eyes stray to the loaf proving in the corner of the kitchen. “Don’t you need to get that in the oven?”

“I don’t need anything, imzadi,” Will says, his voice sounding more broken-open with every thrust. “Just you. Just this.”

There are floury handprints all over her when they’re done, and they have a lot of cleaning up to do.

Afterwards, Will takes her face in his hands and kisses her so softly, rests his forehead on hers. “I missed this so much,” he tells her. “And my back’s killing me,” he admits. He leans back against the countertop and stretches, a slightly pained expression on his face. “Not that I wouldn’t do it again.”

Deanna smiles at him, a real smile, shot through with the fondness of many years of knowing this man, of having him be _hers_.

“Me too, imzadi,” she agrees. “You go and sit down. I’ll finish up here.”

“You’d better not to be teasing me about being old,” Will says, mirth in his eyes.

“Mom,” Kestra says, halfway through her favourite holovid they’ve seen at least eight times. “Do you miss your sister?”

She’s curled into Deanna’s side on the couch. Will’s in the chair nearby, reading one of his 22nd-century detective novels. He looks up for a moment, but doesn’t make a move to join the conversation.

“Your aunt Kestra died when I just a baby,” Deanna tells her. “I was too small to remember her.”

Kestra nods seriously. “Right, like dad’s mom.”

“I don’t know if you can miss someone you didn’t know. But I do think about her. Me and your grandmother talked about her a lot. I know that she really loved having a sister, that she was so happy when I was born.”

“Just like Thad was about me.”

Deanna smiles down at her daughter. “Yes, he was. He was so excited when Daddy brought him to sickbay to meet you for the first time. He loved you right away.”

“Is it easier once it happens to you lots of times? People dying, I mean.” Kestra asks.

Will meets Deanna’s eyes briefly, a knowing, tender look passing between them.

 _Want to take this one?_ she sends.

“I wish that were true,” he says, and Kestra looks up in surprise. “It never stops feeling bad when you lose someone you care about. But I guess it’s like this: when you lose someone, you make a little space inside yourself, and you keep them there, inside your heart. And some people have no spaces yet, and some people have one or two. Some people have lots of them. But however many you have, you can still be happy, you can still live, you can do the things you want. You just get to carry that memory of the person, or people everywhere you go. And you can take it out and look at it anytime you want.”

“Spaces. That kind of makes sense. But aren’t you full of holes, then? Like…cheese?” Kestra’s eyes are dancing. For a moment, she looks just like her father, Deanna thinks.

A laugh bursts from Will. “Yeah, just like that. Cheese with holes is still just as good, right?”

“Right.” Kestra nods, her eyes swivelling back to the holoscreen.

Deanna runs a hand over Kestra’s hair. _I love you, imzadi,_ she tells Will silently.

He’s already turned back to his book, but she hears, _You, too._

They celebrate Thad’s sixteenth birthday anyway.

Over the years, Will has gotten fairly good at manipulating icing and fondant to accommodate the increasingly complex cakes requested for birthdays.

Kestra’s requests run more exotic — rainbow cupcakes with passion fruit icing, the life-size bunnicorn cake he’d made for her seventh birthday — but Thad’s tastes never varied. His cake was the same every year: chocolate sponge, raspberry buttercream inside.

The simple act of making it is harder than he thought it would be. His mind flickers with images of birthdays past: from the first one where Thad ended wearing more cake than eating it, to the last one where he’d put on a brave face all day though he was in pain. Deanna had known it, too — Will had seen how drawn her expression was, beneath the smile she kept on her face for the sake of the celebration. But it was a happy day for them all, one of the moments where they could be a normal family and forget about what was coming.

“Yum,” Kestra says, her smile bright as she dips a finger into the bowl and scoops a blob of cake batter into her mouth.

Will looks down at his daughter, who has always given her smiles so easily to everyone. Even now, she smiles often, unbothered by the expectations adults place on their grief. The knot in his chest eases.

“Want to help?” She nods eagerly. He passes over the butter and powdered sugar and lets Kestra get to work with a bowl and whisk.

He tries his most ambitious project yet: a painstakingly detailed map of Ardani. It isn’t perfect — Niktlin is much larger than it should be, and Yz is barely a speck on the map when it ought to look like an island.

When he brings it to the table and lights the candles, Deanna’s eyes are glistening with tears. He reaches for her hand and she grips his fingers like they’re a lifeline, but she’s smiling.

“It’s beautiful, Will.” She takes in all the small details, visibly touched.

“Thank my assistant,” he says, ruffling Kestra’s hair. She grins up at him, blinking through her own tears.

“Blow them out, Kestra,” Deanna says, encouraging, her hand on Kestra’s arm.

“I didn’t wish for him to come back,” Kestra says bravely, afterwards. “I know that can’t happen. I just wished that he’s happy.”

Will pulls them both into his arms, hugs his wife and daughter close like he can hold all the broken parts of his little family together. His own private wish is that he could. They all cry that night, but the cake turned out well, at least. They eat generous slices of it and speak in Ardani’s languages and try their best to be grateful that they have each other.

One rainy afternoon, they dredge up some of the old family holos and settle down in the den.

The one of Thad’s second birthday — complete with screaming tantrum when his first slice of cake falls on the floor — seems to amuse Kestra in particular.

“You almost look young in that, Dad,” she says, with eleven-year-old candour.

“And what am I now?” Will says in mock outrage, making Kestra smile. “That was only our third year on the _Titan,_ when you were but a glint in my eye.” He reaches out to tweak Kestra’s cheek. She ducks, grinning.

“Your beard wasn’t white back then!” she exclaims.

“White or not, I always thought it made me look kind of distinguished,” Will says.

“He was quite handsome, your father, back in the day,” Deanna says with a sly smile. She winks at Will. “And he was _very_ popular with the —”

“Imzadi,” Will cuts in, warningly, but he’s laughing now.

“Really.” Kestra shakes her head in disbelief, as though she’d rather not think about it. “You know, I always think it was really dumb of you not to marry Mom for, like, fifteen years,” she adds.

“It was,” Will agrees, flashing Deanna a rueful look that she answers with an understanding smile. “At least she said yes in the end.”

Will rustles up some popcorn on the stove and they watch a few more while they wait for the rain to ebb. They’ve kept so many: family holodeck adventures based on Thad’s early imaginings of Ardani, moments from Kestra’s first days in the world. The disastrous camping trip to Deneva IV, cut short when Will broke his leg and had to spend the rest of their shore leave in sickbay.

Kestra begs to hear stories of Data, like she often does. Will and Deanna try to remember their best anecdotes, from Sherlock Holmes to Data’s experiments in dating.

“You really miss him, don’t you,” Kestra observes, scraping her finger around the bottom of the popcorn bowl to get the last of the salt.

“We do,” Deanna replies, laying her hand over Will’s as she senses the stirrings of an old, worn-in grief within him.

“Or, as Data would say,” Will says quietly, “our mental pathways had to learn to be unaccustomed to his sensory input patterns.”

“It sounds like he made everyone around him happy, even though he didn’t have feelings like we do.” Kestra pauses to lick the salt from her fingers. “I think Data would have really liked Ardani. And Thad.”

A fond smile grows on Will’s face. “Yeah. He sure would have.” He squeezes Kestra’s shoulder and she returns the smile.

There’s a terrible irony, Deanna thinks, with a jolt in her stomach, that the loss of their android friend would also lead to the loss of their son.

She knows Will can sense it, too, from his quiet, _hey, imzadi_ , in her head. She smiles at Kestra, brings herself back into the moment. Reminds herself they're allowed to be happy.

“Did I really do everything I could?” Will says into the darkness. The words have been churning in his mind for long sleepless minutes.

They always circle back to this, somehow.

“Will, of all people, I know that if you could done more, you would have,” Deanna says. The bed’s weight shifts as she shuffles closer, presses the warmth of her body to his. “You found this place. He loved it here; he was happy. We all were.”

Somehow, Will finds himself thinking about Thad, sticky and warm on Deanna’s chest in the seconds after she delivered him. His hand was shaking when he reached out to touch him for the first time. Thad’s face was scrunched up from his little cries and he was small enough that his head could fit in the palm of Will’s cupped hand. He’d never believed any of those saccharine things people said about your child being perfect to you, but he understood right then what that felt like. The thought broke him and he was crying and kissing Deanna, his tears falling onto their baby boy’s head while she laughed at him gently.

Deanna smiles, a tear in her eye as the memory touches her. “I almost broke your fingers.”

“And I nearly threw up from the pain.” He chuckles softly. “I still don’t know how you did that twice.”

“I had you,” she tells him, snuggling into his side. “Feeling you there right with me in my mind was such a comfort, imzadi. I had your strength, too.”

“I’d certainly call it a unique experience,” he says, and kisses the top of her head. “He was perfect, wasn’t he?” Will smiles as another thought comes to him. “Remember when he was, maybe, five months old? When he cried constantly and I used to have to take him down to engineering at night to calm him.”

“I remember,” Deanna says, a hand resting on Will’s chest. “He loved the vibration of the warp core lulling him to sleep.”

His smile is fond. “The crew got used to seeing me down there with him.”

“At least it let me get some sleep,” she says. “He was such a fretful baby; he cried so much more than Kestra ever did. I was going out of my mind.”

“He would have done amazing things, wouldn't he,” Will murmurs, sounding sleepier now. His eyes are starting to close.

She's too overcome by that to say more than: “Lights off.”

She grounds herself in the feeling of Will’s body against hers. The relaxed quality of his mind takes her into a restful sleep right along with him.

Deanna watches through the kitchen window as Kestra positions her arrow, draws back the bow. Her clear eyes sight down the arrow shaft and she's holding herself very still, controlling her breathing. So much like her brother.

Real arrows are sharp and deadly, and her and Will had gone back and forth over whether eleven was old enough to handle them. But Kestra started instruction a few weeks earlier, and has turned out to be as much of a natural at archery as Thad was.

The other arrows have landed in the grass, but Kestra remains undaunted in her pursuit.

The final one in her quiver sticks in one side of the target. She celebrates with an exuberant whoop, spinning around, cloak whipping behind her. For too long, Kestra’s joy has been sullied by grief and the fear that she is forgetting her brother. It gladdens Deanna’s heart to see such a display.

“She’s getting pretty good, huh? Our wild girl of the woods.”

Deanna turns; she was so focused on the scene outside she hadn’t even sensed him. He slides his arms around her waist with easy intimacy, presses his lips to her hair.

“She is,” Deanna replies. “They certainly didn’t get their athletic tendencies from me, that’s for sure.”

Kestra retrieves her arrows and tries again. They watch her bomb the next two shots but the third one hits the side of the target.

She catches sight of the pair of them and waves happily.

The hum of music is drifting through the open door when Deanna walks into the kitchen.

Will is busily working some dough, humming along to some old West Coast jazz piece that sounds vaguely familiar. He’s so absorbed in it he doesn’t notice her as she steps closer.

She gets her hands on his waist, slides them forward so she’s wrapped around him. He startles a moment before he slaps his hands over hers, coating them in flour.

“Will!” She’s brushing it it from her palms as he turns around.

“Hey, imzadi. If you’re going to sneak up behind me, you deserve what you get.” He’s wearing his apron, flour on his hands and a smile on his face. “I thought I’d break out the pizza oven. It’s been a while.” He gestures to the mess of dough on the counter.

“Kestra will be thrilled.”

He reaches for her and she laughs, ducking away. “You’ll ruin this shirt!”

“Good,” he jokes. Then, much softer: “Maybe I can take it off later.”

Deanna looks at him coyly. “Kestra’s only upstairs, Will.” She tilts her head in the direction of the ceiling, where the faint sound of Klingon metal reverberates through the wood; their daughter’s new obsession.

“Mm-hm.” He rubs his hands down on his apron and offers her an outstretched hand. Deanna is shaking her head, but she’s already smiling. He threads his fingers into hers, rests his other hand on her hip as he pulls her up against the warmth of his body, getting flour all over her shirt anyway. She can't bring herself to care.

They’re swaying softly to the music, his lips against her hair when she feels Will’s hand shift up her back, his hip pressing to hers. It’s the only warning she has before he dips her low and leans down to kiss her.

“Watch you don't throw your back out again,” she teases, melting into the kiss and the unashamed romance of the moment in spite of herself.

Will has her upright again in seconds. “Didn’t expect that, did you?” He’s smiling down at her.

“You can still surprise me, imzadi,” Deanna concedes, slightly breathless. She winds her arms around his neck, tips her head forward to rest on his chest.

“Don’t you remember this piece?” he says, and she listens.

Of course. She recognised the notes on the way in, but had never considered what it was. It’s a jazz standard he tried and failed to play for her on Betazed, when he was young and foolish and puffed up with pride about all the things he had going for him. Will wasn’t her type, but his cheerful humility when he messed up that song had charmed her. The rest, as they say, is history.

Deanna smiles at the thought of it. They hadn’t known then they were forging a connection that would last them nearly forty years — half of them in marriage — and give them two beautiful children. There’s nothing she regrets about the unusual path they took. Not when it gave them the chance to know their son for fifteen years. Not when it gave them Kestra, and each other for a lifetime.

“Of course I remember,” she tells him, kissing him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'The Breach' by Dustin Tebbutt.
> 
> Shoutout to Michael Chabon for making this fic happen by confirming stuff on his Instagram like when Thad died & Kestra's homeschooling and extracurriculars. And for the map of Ardani.


End file.
